Job candidate has presented my work as his own

[PurplePirate]

Will try to keep this short. Have also changed some details for privacy.

I am on an interview panel tomorrow (via Zoom). The chair has just emailed through the pack which includes the slides prepared by the three candidates for their presentations. We ask them to send through their slides in advance in case there is a problem with the Zoom link on the day.

One candidate, I will call Bill, worked at the same company as me about six years ago. When I was there I led a project and I created a distinctive and rather lovely slide deck as part of my work.

FF six years and Bill has submitted my slide deck. The presentation task is something like "Describe a project you have led and your approach to organisational transformation". So do I assume Bill is going to pass my work off as his own? Do I tell the chair now? Wait until the interview and watch him twig?

Bill may not realise I am on the interview panel. We do tell candidates the names of the panel beforehand but I am a last minute replacement for a colleague who is ill so I don't know if HR updated the candidates. I was not involved in shortlisting Bill.

The other candidates might all be doing the same thing, but without being caught!

Straight to the chair.

No advice, but if this is true I’m bookmarking it for an update.

if it were me though, I would be furious and definitely would tell the chair and then if the chair wants to go ahead with the interview I would ask him all the questions you would do had he presented something else and definitely watch him squirm.

I think you've got to have a discreet word with the chair. It's not fair on the other members of the interviewing panel to keep that to yourself until the actual interview. If they decide not to act on it, then the time for watching Bill squirm will present itself in due course at the interview.

Bill is a weasel.

This. At a certain level, you should already know what to do. Asking strangers on the internet of unknown experience for advice isn’t it.

You must tell the Chair now.

I'd tell the other interviewers, but still hold the interview to watch the candidate squirm.

Yep. Plus I'm always suspicious of companies that ask for these things in advance.

There's no good reason why candidates can't bring them on the day on a memory stick.

I’d tell them now. I’d be annoyed if a fellow interviewer wasted my time on an interview because they wanted to watched an ex colleague squirm. If they decide to go ahead, fair enough.

I assume this sort of thing happens all the time - he’s got unlucky that you’re on the panel. Other people will get away with it. Nothing you can do about that.

This is interesting. Do you think it is a situation in which Bill has somehow misperceived your work as being at least partly his own - for example because his experience and memory are filtered through a kind of arrogance that causes him to over-estimate his own contribution to team productivity and successes (esp when the actual work is done by a woman)? Or do you think he is undeluded and simply trying to pull a fast one?

Either way, I guess it would be best to let the chair know in advance, esp in the former case because he might try to force his own account of the past.

(Though it woulod be more fun to confront him actually in the interview)

Im unclear if he is claiming he has done the project you actually did or just using a slide design you made. The first is clearly unacceptable the second may not be deliberate? In most organisations I work in a nice looking slide deck is fair game for anyone else to use. They often get saved into 'good slide template' folders. (This is assuming that design work itself isn't the role, then we are back to unacceptable)

I was genuinely thrown and trying to think of reasons why he would do this. It's possible (because we only have a copy of the slides, not what the candidates are going to say) that he has mis-read the brief and thought he has to describe any project he was involved in. It's possible he accidently attached the wrong file to his email (I have done exactly that before for a job interview). There could be some other explanation. I don't want to immediately jump to conclusions.

He's a waste of space, tell the chair, they can still interview him if they like, but it's a waste of everyone's time he clearly can't get the job.

OK then give the chair the factual information that it is your slide pack from x years ago, and see where it goes in the interview.

What was Bill’s role on the project? If he was your line manager or your direct report team lead he could genuinely be considered to have also led the project with you.

Do you mean the exact presentation you created on PowerPoint? Or just the templates with new information?

Yes, I am more than happy for colleagues to use my slides for whatever purpose. They often do. And I left the slide deck behind when I left the company.

Bill was not an official part of the project but it was a big project and affected lots of departments, including his, so he would have seen the slide deck. He moved into a team adjacent to my area after I left but the project was closed down by then.

The exact presentation, topped and tailed with new intro and ending slides. But otherwise the exact slides. I slaved over them for months so I know them almost by heart still!

This. No question about it.

I had a similar thing happen and was furious. I told everyone and the guy was a laughing stock.

I'm on a train on my way to a client meeting (hence being on MN). I have sent a message to the chair to ask if she is free before the end of the day to have a quick chat. I will just give the facts, no inference. I don't really know the chair very well as I am a last minute substitute and they had to cast their net wide.

It's so true though that any of the candidates could present someone else's work as their own, it's only Bill's bad luck that my colleague has laryngitis and can't speak and I have been drafted in. I've just checked and we are connected on LinkedIn so if he's done some research he will know where I work.

Can you tell me more? Any advice???

As a HR professional, I’d advise you “out” him by asking questions he will struggle to answer, exposing his lack of actual involvement in the project. And then flag it after the interview. I wouldn’t do anything ahead of the interview.

Do you have a copy of your work?